Inaugeration Day

For those of you still in Akron and out of the Dem loop, the hot ticket today is a watch party co-sponsored by Reps Betty Sutton and Tim Ryan at the Akron Civic. Details here.

My teaching schedule neatly coincides with the event, so no tweets or liveblogs around here. I have it on DVR, so maybe some reaction later.

Enjoy.

The Election and the Supreme Court

While wading through some long neglected corners of my Google Reader, I ran across this anti-Obama rant by Holly in Cincinnati on Moderate Voice. Holly was one of the most stridently anti-Obama voices during the primary and apparently is feeling quite PUMA-ish.

Holly will do what she will do, but one item in particular caught my eye. She rejects the argument that a vote for McCain is a vote for a right wing lurch on the Supreme Court, "because SCOTUS appointees historically tend to moderate their views and do the very best job that they can to serve the American people and our judicial system."

That's not an argument. That's denial.

First off, understand what we are talking about. Currently the Court is composed of four predictably conservative judges -- Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia -- and four judges that vote in what passes these days as liberally -- Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens. Kennedy is currently the swing vote.

Holly is right that some justices moderate their views. Kennedy is an example. He is by nature a conservative, but unlike the right wing of the court, his conservatism includes respecting stare decisis (the principle that says precedent should be followed) and worries about a drastic change by the Court disrupting society. In addition, he has allowed life experience (for example, getting to know gay clerks and employees, attending international law conferences) to influence his jurisprudence. O'Connor, the previous swing vote, what much the same.

On the other hand, Thomas and Scalia have not moderated their views one iota. For example, in a concurrence in the early Nineties Thomas outlined a view of the Constitution that would render most government regulation of the economy -- including labor, health and environmental legislation -- unconstitutional. Scalia recently declared that the decision that simply allowed Guantanamo detainees to have a day in court would inevitably result in more people dying in terrorist attacks.

Court watchers generally agree that Roberts and Alito are similarly unlikely to moderate their views. Alito for one is still the same jurist who declared a Pennsylvania law requireing a woman to notify her spouse before having an abortion constitutional before the Court struck it down in Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

Not only are some judges disinclined to change their views, the right wing seems to be getting better at making the prediction. The three most recent Republican appointments -- Thomas, Roberts and Alito, are also the most recalcitrantly conservative.

This matters now more than ever. The next President will almost certainly replace two, if not three members of the liberal block. Stevens is 88. Ginsberg is 75 and a cancer survivor. Souter is 69 but reportedly loathes DC. (Scalia at 72 is the only conservative near any possible retirement age.)

So the next President will almost certainly replace a large segement of the liberal bloc. McCain has signaled his intention to nominate justices in the mold of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas. In point of fact you have at least three different molds there, but the message is clear -- no more compromisers like Kennedy and O'Connor.

If this happens, losing Roe v. Wade will look like a relatively mild consequence. Large swaths of legislation protecting consumers, guaranteeing bargaining rights and safeguarding the environment will be at risk. Individual civil liberties on the other hand will be given a back of the hand. In particular, the righty bloc has little patience for challenges to government religious speech or limits on law enforcement. Whatver moderating effect on all this Kennedy has had would be gone as Scalia would take his place at an increasingly rightward center. (Prof. Will Huhn has a series of posts getting more specific on all this. Click here and scroll down to the Court in the Balance posts.)

For my conservative friends, this is all fine of course. But if you do not want to see a simultaneously ultraconservative and activist court, vote Obama. It's your one chance to shape the Court.

LMJ's Fact-Free Editorial

The Lorain Morning Journal runs an editorial today -- not a wingnut-penned op-ed, mind, but an editiorial -- rehashing the charge that Obama wants to turn the Constitution into Das Kapital. Here's the nut:

With less than a week remaining before Election Day, it seems to us that the real October surprise of 2008 is how little serious attention is being paid to the genuine and profoundly disturbing statements by Barack Obama himself. Specifically, Obama's "spread the wealth" admission to Joe the Plumber and most especially to an interview Obama did on Chicago public radio several years ago in which he basically dismisses the U.S. Constitution as a flawed document because it only talks about protecting citizens from the government and does not specify what the government "must" do for citizens. His words create the distinct impression that under an Obama presidency, federal judges and Supreme Court justices appointed by Obama would be encouraged to reinterpret the Constiution and to go beyond its words in ways that would result in a whole new concept of what the United States of America is about. Although Obama's delivery of these concepts was as cool and dispassionate as ever, the real-life social impact of such reinventing of the Constitution would surely be so red-hot as to make the word "radical" totally inadequate.

Problem. Obama didn't say that. More to the point, he said the opposite. You can find a transcript on the Fox News site of all places and follow along. (By the way, I've cleaned up the transcription a bit.) First off, here's the bit that Limbaugh et al use to make the charge:

I mean if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy and the court I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would not have the right to vote would now be able to sit at lunch counter and as lpong as I could pay for it would be ok but the supreme court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice.

OK, stop right there. Not because that completes Obama's thought, but because the wingers using this interview stop there. I unfortunately ran across Rush declaiming on this earlier this week. He stops the tape here and says, "He regrets this. He thinks this is a bad thing." With no actual evidence or anything.

So here's the rest of that graf:

in this society and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the warren court it wasn't that radical it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution at least as it has been interpreted and the warren court interpreted it generally in the same way that the constitution is a document of negative liberties says what the states cant do to you says what the federal govt cant do to you but it doesn't say what the federal govt or state govt must do on your behalf and that hasn't shifted and i think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court focused i think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that.

There's a lot here -- about latter day critics of the Warren Court, about the difference between positive and negative rights. It's all heavily academic. The key for our purposes is the last bit where Obama says that the court successes lulled the movement into relying too much on litigation and not enough on political organization. That doesn't sound like someone who wants to write redistribution into the Constitution but the opposite -- someone who thinks questions of economic policy should be left to the political process.

Not enough? Try this from later in the interview:

You know maybe I am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor but you know I am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts you know the institution just isn't structured that way just look at very rare examples where during he desegregation era the court was willing to for example order you know changes that cost money to local school district and the court was very uncomfortable with it it was hard to manage it was hard to figure out you start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues you know in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that is essentially is administrative and take a lot of time the court is not very good at it and politically it is hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard so I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally you know I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts I think that as a practical matte that our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it.

So, an interview in which Obama says that using courts to redistribute wealth is used to prove he intends to use courts to redistribute wealth. One wonders if the LMJ actually read the transcript, or if they just heard the Fox/Limbaugh snippet. In their summing up, the paper says:

Do not brush off this admonition as an empty scare tactic from a newspaper that has endorsed John McCain.

Fair enough. Instead let's brush it off as an empty scare tactic from a newspaper that can't be bothered to do basic reporting.

UPDATE: I'm off my game. I forgot to h/t my tweep Olevia for the tip.

UPDATE 2: Olevia points out that I forgot to link to the piece. And I forgot the link for the transcript. Really really off my game. Links are updated above. Also if you want to know more about the negative/positive rights issue alluded to above, Prof. Will Huhn has a good explanation on Akron Law Cafe.

Tonight

I will again be a panelist on the Buckeye State Blog liveblog of the finally final debate. Surf over and enjoy.

"That One" Is 2008's "You Forgot Poland"

Presidential debates are like open wheel auto races: The participants have little contact with each other making them generally dull, but the crashes are spectacular if they occur. And mercifully, they go by pretty fast.

But as tedious as debates generally are, they do occasionally contribute some few bytes to the popular culture data stream. This cycle, the contribution seems destined to be John McCain referring to Barack Obama as "that one." If I have found the last person in the Western Hemisphere who hasn't seen it yet, here is the clip:



I'm less scandalized by this than some. More than anything I find it curious to hear John "Western Maverick" McCain using what I always considered to be a mid-Atlantic colloquialism. I never heard it before my stint in the DC area, but there it was pretty common. And people generally used it affectionately but teasingly, rather than coldly dismissively.

I haven't been able to verify it's origins as "that one" is pretty much impossible to Google. Someone with a better working knowledge of linguistics blogs than I (*cough* K-Pho *cough*) may be able to help out with this.

In any event, just like "You forgot Poland" was up and viral within hours of the '04 debate, some enterprising souls have thatone08.com up and running, complete with merch. (H/t Dave Harding at ProgOH.) And because this is 08, not 04, we also have a Facebook page.

Debate 2.0 Liveblogged at BSB

Thanks to the BSB guys for inviting me to participate in their liveblog of the second Presidential debate. Check it out here.

InterviewPalin.com: Computer Generated Satire

Computer algorithm parody sites have been all the rage this election cycle -- the '08 equivalent to You Forgot Poland and johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com. Sandy Levinson at Balkinization put me on to my fav so far -- a Sarah Palin interview generator. The site clicks you through a series of questions, answered by a program using a Markov chain. Here's a sample.

Q: Why should the US elect Senator McCain?

McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that contract that should be inherent in corporations who are spending, investing other people's money, the abuse of that closed door, good old boy network that has to be in, if we were to allow that to happen. We have got to get a more coordinated and a much more than smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we need to implement those. We cannot just concede that, oh, gee, maybe they're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I think that I am so proud of his desire to control and to control and to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world is and how important it is the foundation of our best interests to fight against a regime, especially Iran, who would seek to protect the good guys in this, the leaders of Israel and her friends, her allies, including the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska.

Spot on.

Oh, and Hi again.

I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like

But obviously McCain/Palin have. The big political news this week was a fluffy controversy over whether Obama called Sarah Palin a pig.¹ Some of my friends have suggested that Obama set himself up for the attack by referencing "lipstick." But with McCain/Palin so settled on calculated umbrage as a campaign tactic, it seems unlikely Obama could have found a metaphor to convey the message that

• Can't polish a turd: Sly reference at Palin changing diapers; subliminal attempt to touch off Mommy Wars.
• Deja vu all over again. Quote comes from Yogi Berra who is old and dottering (though he was dottering when he said it and is old now). Clearly an agist attack on McCain.
  
• Can't teach an old dog new tricks: Calling Palin a dog now? Completely inexcusable. Bonus campaign flip-flop after Biden opined that she is good looking.
• A leopard can't change it's spots. Does Palin wear animal print?
• Putting old wine in a new botttle. Now it sounds like he's asking her on a date.
• The more things change, the more they stay the same. The original is in French -- Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 'Nuff said.
  

Everyone has advice for Obama this week. The clear lesson from L'affair de la cochon? Stop speaking. Now.


¹Here's a close as I can come to a complete transcript of the infamous remark splicing together MediaMatters and Ben Smith:

Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too. Except -- and so I guess his whole angle is, "Watch out, George Bush, except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. We're really gonna shake things up in Washington." That's not change. That's just calling some -- the same thing, something different. But you know, you can't -- you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink. We've had enough of the same old thing

And as for Obama's second metaphor? I'm not going near that.

The Palin Mud Wrestling Strategy

In the classic vulgar comedy Stripes, John Candy gets talked into Um, it was the Eighties. Anyway, the best bit is when he hits one of his opponents who cries "You hit me and I'm a girl." He lets his guard down to apologize and she decks him. I don't entirely trust AOL's embed code, but here goes. Warning, not entirely SFW.



"You hit me and I'm a girl" seems to be the running slogan for the McCain/Palin campaign. Specifically, Gov. Palin will feel free to jab at Obama/Biden (and embellish her own record) but any critcism of Palin causes collective vapors in the McCain campaign. "You can't hit her like that, she's a girl," they cry as she's rearing back for a roundhouse.

Jill opines that the campaign is sequestering her out of sexist concern for her weakness. I think it's a conscious strategy to immunize her from criticism. The Candy bit is funny because it touches on something primal -- we have a problem with seeing a woman being, well, manhandled. Whether it's cultural or instinctive doesn't matter -- it's there and it's powerful.

So will it work? That depends entirely on the willingness of voters to call BS, something we collectively seem incapable of doing. The media didn't help with their many missteps in the first week of Palin vetting. (It's reassuring to know that we don't have to worry about Palin cozying up to a treasonous separatist party just because it was falsely reported that she was a member.) Still, the capacity of McCain/Palin to piss on our collective legs and convince us it's the weather has thus far been breathtaking.

How Far to the Right Is Sarah Palin? UPDATED

Far enough to the right that she supported Pat Buchanan's run in 1999. You know, the isolationist paleoconservative who doesn't hate Jews or minorities, but just really really likes Christian white people? Yeah, that Pat Buchanan.

Game changer, indeed.

UPDATE: Much as I'd like to continue the dialogue with DJW, this story renders the discussion moot. I'm not sure I get a public figure showing up at a rally wearing a button, then saying "psyche." But for a part-time mayor of a small time in Alaska, we can let it pass.

Btw, the Obama campaign screwed up calling Buchanan a "Nazi sympathizer." Buchanan is a Nazi apologist. Let's keep that straight.

Will Sarah Palin Help? She Already Has.

It's an open question whether John McCain's choice of half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will significantly shift voters to McCain's side. But her out-of-right-field selection helped in two important, short term ways.

First, the announcement completely such Obama's air out of the room. Even the lefty blogs are entirely done talking about his speech last night, about the historicity of the moment, about the bounce. All anyone is talking about is Sarah Who? and what does it mean. It's Sarah Palin's news cycle, Barack Obama is just living in it.

If McCain had made a more conventional choice, it's unlikely he would have shouldered Obama out of the way quite so successfully. The most conventional choice -- Pawlenty, probably -- would have elicited something like "Yeah, that's what we thought, and how will that relate to the race after Obama's historic nomination last night . . ." By making a selection this unexpected and risky and historic in its own right, McCain/Palin has dominated the conversation since noon.

Second, Sarah Palin being a woman has softened somewhat the fact that Sarah Palin is a Christian Right darling. If McCain had picked a relative unknown and inexperience man with lockdown social conservative credentials, the move would be widely seen as a pander to the religious right base. Because Palin breaks a gender barrier (at least as far as GOP veep choices), her selection is seen less as a sop to the hard right than as more maverickiness from McCain.

Will this advantage endure in the long run? Time will tell. Palin's youth and inexperience cause problems, both by blunting the same criticism of Obama and heightening concerns about McCain's age. And it's hard to claim maverick status when you've picked the least qualified candidate on your short list purely because she might help win an election.

Still, no question that McCain/Palin have won this day.

McCain's Guantanamo Statement, Annotated

Swampland has the most complete, but not completely complete, version of John McCain's statement on the Boumediene v. Bush I've been able to find. While the "one of the worst decisions" tag has gotten the most play, the whole statement is a disgrace. Here it is, with my thoughts in footnotes. And if you don't want to go all the way through it, the most important bit is in footnote 7.

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions¹ in the history² of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to make sure that we didn't torture any prisoners, that we didn't mistreat them³, that we abided by the Geneva Conventions, which applies to all prisoners. But we also made it perfectly clear, and I won't go through all the legislation we passed, and the prohibition against torture, but we made it very clear that these are enemy combatants², these are people who are not citizens, they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have⁴. And my friends there are some bad people down there. There are some bad people.⁵ So now what are we going to do. We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material⁷. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases⁸. By the way, 30 of the people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again, one of them just a couple weeks ago, a suicide bomber in Iraq. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.

¹McCain has made clear for some time that he intends to demagogue the courts. It's good strategy. In doing so he winds dog whistles to the base in terms that the center doesn't find too offensive. But he does love him some hyperbole. For example in responding to a Federalist Society inquiry about how he would pick judges, he said "I believe that one of the greatest threats to our liberty and the Constitutional framework that safeguards our freedoms are willful judges who usurp the role of the people and their representatives and legislate from the bench."

²I hope at some point some enterprising reporter asks McCain what the other worst decisions ever would be. Certainly we can expect Roe v. Wade to top the list, and anti-Roe folks have long linked Roe with Dred Scott in the pantheon of badness (which is bull for reasons too complicated to go into now.) On the other hand, for both long-term damage and the Court's brazen insistence that day is night, it's hard to beat Plessey v. Ferguson. Given the conservative cottage industry in debunking Brown, it's hard to imagine him going there. Similarly, he presumably wouldn't include Koromatsu in which the Court said the government could inter Japanese Americans on the West Coast because the military said they wanted to.

³Plenty of reports suggest that this great effort on McCain's part was less than an unqualified success.

⁴If Tom Blumer were serious about his "objectively unfit" business, he would declare McCain objectively unfit based on this statement. Neither the legislature nor the executive decides who is an enemy combatant. That's the whole freaking point. Imagine a Presidential candidate complaining about an eminent domain decision thusly: "We made it clear that the property was worth $5000 an acre." The right would go insane over such hubris, and such a fundamental lack of understanding about how our democracy works.

⁵This is a false dichotomy. The question isn't full rights of citizens versus only having the right to be free from torture that McCain magnanimously granted. Habeas is far less that the former, and far less than the latter.

⁶And there are some innocent people. The problem is that we haven't established a reliable process for separating the bad from the innocent.

⁷This is where things get scary in the "John McCain is either extravagantly dishonest or deeply confused" sense of scary. Habeas Corpus has nothing to do with the conditions of internment. The Court granted no such rights to sue. A writ of habeas corpus simply compels the government to produce the person being held before a judge and explain the circumstances that gives the government the right to hold him. That's it. That simple, basic protection of personal liberty is all that was at stake in this case, and that's what McCain would deny the people we are detaining. McCain's bollixing that up with lawsuits about diet is unconscionable, as is the media's failure to call him on it.

⁸This is absurdity. He's implying that the decision is bad because it will slow down adjudications that the government wants to get on with. In fact, the Court's decision noted repeatedly that government's practice has been to put off adjudication for as long as possible. McCain may or may not think that "we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases" but the administration disagrees.

⁹It's an open question how many of those were bad guys all along and how many were radicalized by being mistreated by the U.S. and housed with jihadists. Of course the administration has actually floated the idea in the past that we can't release innocent detainees because of the possibility they have been radicalized which as a standard is too horrible to contemplate.

ODP Updated to Be Obama Country, But Not Completely

Both ODB noticed the lag in the ODP website updating to reflect Sen. Barack Obama's new status as undisputed Democratic nominee (though Bill Sloat noticed earlier that they had the merch sales going). When Jill posted news of Gov. Strickland's endorsement I checked back and, for five minutes or so, got a Service Unavailable message. Then on the third or fourth try, this:

Nicely done, but I'm still wondering about this:



The ODP Dinner is little over two weeks away and we still haven't heard who is headlining. Last year it was Hillary; the year before Obama, plus Biden. Given that the smart play is a high-profile surrogate of the nominee, it may well be that the party has been waiting for resolution. We'll see if that plays out, or if it will just be a backyard barbecue among us Ohio Dems.

BTW, I'll be on a plane back home that day, so no report this year.

Obama's Map

The First Read guys are updating their electoral college map. The leftysphere has been giddy about a new national poll, but of course the map is what's important. Here are the reported results and thoughts:

Base Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, MD, MA, NY, RI, VT (153 electoral votes)
Lean Obama: ME, NJ, MN, OR, WA (47 votes)
Toss-up: CO, FL, IA, MI, NV, NM, NH, OH, PA, VA, WI (138 votes)
Lean McCain: AR, GA, IN, LA, MS, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND (84 votes)
Base McCain: AL, AK, AZ, ID, KS, KY, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY (116 votes)

While both McCain and Obama get to 200 when adding up their base and lean states, it’s clear to see that Obama has an early edge with the map. Not only does he have a stronger base than McCain does (153 votes vs. 116), but he also has more potential pick-up opportunities. When you add toss-up and “Lean McCain,” Obama has the potential for another 222 votes outside his favored states. By comparison, McCain’s toss-up and “Lean Obama” comes to 185. Of course, potential sometimes means just that -- potential. At the end of the day, Obama will likely win few, if any, of those Lean McCain states. But his reach right now seems much longer than McCain’s.

Some additional thoughts.

This map represents gains almost across the board from the (methodologically different) Rove map of a couple of weeks ago.

The map also shows the power of Obama's fundraising advantage. He will be able run McCain all over the country, giving him little in the way of uncontested wins. Normally Dems write off the southeast, but Obama can spare some money and time in vote-rich states like North Carolina and Georgia. He probably won't win both and might not win either, but McCain will have to devote resources there, including pouring TV money into expensive media markets like Atlanta, to keep Obama at bay.

One of the oft asked questions around here is whether Obama will write off Ohio in favor of another swing state like Missouri or the newly-swingy Virginia. Between the current toss-up status and again the money advantage, he may not need to make that choice.

The First Read story goes on to say that the results over the next two weeks will reflect a bounce from securing the nomination. Not an illegitimate bounce, but it will likely drop a bit heading into July.

Jeff has some other map results up. I prefer a five-tier division like this to a straight up electoral vote count.

Finally, the map reflects some ongoing changes in demography. New Hampshire, once resolutely red, is looking increasingly blue. Similarly Colorado and Virginia look more purple with each passing cycle, though some reports indicate that Colorado is in more of an issue-dependent flux like Ohio than a demographic sea change.

Gee, I Thought I Was Special

Hillary's email today says she wants me to be "one of the first to know" that she's dropping out and endorsing Obama.

By "one of the first" she apparently means after the readers of The Washington Post, New York Times, and the blogs, plus with the cable news watchers and contemporaneously with everyone else on her list.

And here I was hoping we were going to chat again.

Hey, Look It's Hillary Clinton! What's Hillary Doing? Everyone! Let's All Pay Attention to Hillary!!!

So no decisions last night, another day of hints and leaks and finally word that she's dropping out and endorsing Obama. Probably.

And of course I'm supposed be acting gracious about all this and the fact that I don't says something bad about me. And I'm supposed to be done with this. What almighty goddam fucking ever.

I've not always been sure of Obama but tonight I'm really good with Hillary not being the nominee.

A Slight Repurposing

As the Slog to the White House has dragged on, this blog has been distracted, especially by the escalation of disingenuous transmissions from Planet Hillary. It's time to turn focus back to what got me interested in blogging in the first place. I can argue repeatedly that including Michigan in The Biggest Vote Total Ever^®, but Planet Hillary remains a place largely devoid of a reality-based community. (h/t Pandagon) Is it too much to ask that Hillary supporters be at least a little inspired by the fact that we nominated a Black man for President less than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act? Apparently.

I've given Hillary my suggestion. It went like this:

And now it is time to stand down. It is time to rally your supporters behind the party's nominee. To do that, you need to concede.

Of course as soon as I hit SUBMIT the site took me to a donation page.

Up until now the next best thing for Dems has been for the race to end. Everywhere but Planet Hillary it has. Now comes time to concentrate on defeating McCain in the general. Plus I want to blog more of what inspires me: education policy, Constitutional law, local government. Yes, I'm weird that way.

I won't say this is the last time the blog mentions the primary, but for the most part, I wish to move on, even if Hillary doesn't.

One last gift before we do, h/t Donklephant:

The Detroit Pistons Want Your Opinion

If you missed it, Christopher Orr at TNR offered a brilliant "sports parable" today:

Some in the media are declaring the series over because the Boston Celtics have won four of the six games played so far. But I don’t understand why, with a series this close and hotly contested, anyone would want to shut it down before we play a seventh game and have all the results in.

So to carry the parable forward, the Pistons now want you to go to their website and offer advice about what they should do next.

Hillary's Serve

Anthony asks a number of questions about how . . . someone . . . is going to react to Hillary's possible concession tonight. At times he seems to be addressing Obama, at times he must be addressing Obama supporters and for some questions he can only be addressing Hillary Clinton's worst critics. I'm unaware of anyone explicitly aligned with the Obama campaign using the words "witch, bitch and pig," or for that matter insinuating that Hillary is only a strong candidate because she is a woman which at least would mirror statements from her proxies about Obama.

In any event, my predictions are 1) some nominal Obama supporters will embarrass the rest of us and 2) that the Hillary camp will continue to play the game of calling on us on those embarrassments without acknowledging the Ferraros in their midst and 3) the reaction in the bulk of the Obama camp will depend on Hillary herself.

As to that third, remember the tradition in American politics is for the loser to concede graciously, throw his/her support to the victor and then and only then the victor praises the hard fight and tenacious spirit of the vanquished. Given transmissions from Planet Hillary that she won the popular vote (need I say more about that. I hope not) it's not at all clear that she will show the class Anthony speaks of in his opening.

If she suspends and calls for unity behind Obama, most of the Obamasphere should rise to the occasion and we who do should scold those who don't If she concedes that Obama has the delegates but she has the popular vote and that everyone should reconsider the "fairness" of all that, no one should be surprised if a mighty shitrain does fall.

AP Calling It for Obama

Carried on Real Clear Politics:

Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday after a grueling marathon, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.


* * *

The tally was based on public declarations from delegates as well as from another 15 who have confirmed their intentions to the AP. It also included 11 delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.

TMV notes contrasting CBS reports. Donklephant "doesn't understand," possibly because he missed the bit about supers declaring anonymously to AP.

All of this sets up Hillary's much-anticipated address tonight.